homemade experimental music by Hal McGee and friends 1982 to 2018​Click on the HAL CATALOG tab above to see a list of pages for my 300+ albums.​​Each album's page includes a link to the album's Bandcamp page, where you can purchase downloads.​Info on how to purchase CDRs and Cassettes can be found here.

Evan Cantor:The two volumes of Raw Sewage were a compendium of best cuts from discontinued titles, earlier phases of Walls of Genius, before we had even “become” Walls of Genius, thus “raw sewage”, a self-deprecatory joke.I discontinued The Guilt Vs. Time Money Complex because I felt it wasn’t as strong a selection as our others.In retrospect, it strikes me just fine.I don’t remember why we discontinued Sunday Monday Or Always!It’s quite likely that we were simply not selling any of them and there was no point in continuing to keep the title “available”.Since we were duping cassettes mostly on-demand only, it really wouldn’t have made much difference either way.Perhaps we thought it looked professional to have a number of titles “out of print”.In any case, most of that material had never been heard by our audience since, for most of our listeners, we had “emerged” full-blown with the title Before…And After.We wanted the best of the early material to be available in a way that would make it seem new.Plus, we were ‘exposure whores’ and wanted to be mentioned in as many issues of the underground and local press as possible.The easiest way to achieve that was to constantly release new titles for review.Taking old material and re-releasing it gave us an easy option to pursue this strategy.We made the two volumes 60-minute releases, a compromise from our earlier penchant for full 90-minute programs and the more successful 45-minute programs we had recently released.Little Fyodor:In the tradition of Pink Floyd’s album A Nice Pair and probably countless others I can’t think of off the top of my head, once we made it, um, “big?”, at least by the standards of what was reasonably possible for what we were doing, we decided to catch up our audience to what we’d been doing before they may have taken notice of us.And since we’d been oft criticizing for releasing too much and for our tapes being too long (“hey, don’t give me so much, I want less!”?), it made some sense to reintroduce our early material in abridged form and on shorter cassette formats.Still, it took 120 minutes to document all this “best of” early material!The name of these reissue tapes obviously reflects our penchant for self-deprecating humor….Evan dedicated Raw Sewage 1 to Miss Roberta Eklund.I’m sure that was a function of the very
tongue-in-cheek long distance mail flirtation/sex thing we had going for a
little while.I don’t think there was
any particular tie-in between that and this particular tape other than temporal
proximity (it was around the same time).The other thankees on Volume 1 were all guest participants, as was
Andrea DiNapoli, who was thanked on Volume 2.Martha Roskowski was thanked on Vol. 2 probably for hosting our live on
KGNU performance, and the Left-Hand Bookstore was thanked for the
reason given on the liner notes, for hosting the first WoG live performance,
from which “Joe Hill” and “Grounded For a Week” on this tape were culled…. Evan did all the artwork and packaging for these tapes as he pretty much always did, though these two especially feature original art by him. Volume 1 features an abstract psychedelic piece, maybe influenced by Leo’s art, and Volume 2 features a dinosaur with wiggly lines emanating from it. Evan will have to tell you whether he drew the dino from scratch or traced it or directly replicated it from something or what. I also don’t know if the dinosaur was meant to represent the concept of the tape, i.e., old stuff, or whether Evan just thought dinosaurs are cool. Maybe Evan remembers (or can make a guess?)…?EC: Although these tracks were originally released with multiple band names on the earlier releases, they were now simply Walls Of Genius. Both tapes featured wiggly cartoon-style Raw Sewage lettering on the sides, mimicking some lettering I think I found on a Cramps LP. The wiggly style with shadow is often used for Halloween-y things. Sometimes there is dripping blood, but I didn’t go that far. The cover of Volume 1 featured a bunch of my doodling with the hand-drawn titles. It’s not one of my favorites, in terms of my own artwork. The cover of Volume 2 featured a dinosaur graphic with hand-drawn rays emanating from the animal. I really like the dinosaur! Both volumes’ ‘back cover’ were hand-lettered by me. Volume 1 promised “The Best Of The Early Walls Of Genius” and Volume 2, “More Good Shit From Walls Of Genius”. On Volume 1, we thanked Marsha Wooley (one of the original Dirt Clods participants), Melissa Mojica (an occasional participant), Dena Zakar (sic—note that I still hadn’t really figured out how to spell Dena Zocher’s name), and Scott Childress (a regular hanger-on and occasion maraca shaker, whose sarcasm-dripped voice featured prominently on Wanna Beer?). On Volume 2, we thanked Andrea DiNapoli (playing the violin on “Jimi’s Strange Dream”), Martha Roskowski (KGNU dee-jay) and the Left Hand Bookstore, where a number of the tracks had been recorded at Walls of Genius’ first ever live performance (as “Strange Rituals”).LF: The only new material (bonus tracks!) was “Shiva Reality Lesson” from the Major Faultline session, “Jimi’s Strange Dream” by K-9 and a live at KGNU performance of “A Night in Tunisia” by which time we had settled on calling ourselves Walls Of Genius permanently. Um, actually the last of those was a bit of a cheat if the 11/84 dating is correct as I believe that would date it to after the release of Ludovico Treatment and Crazed To The Core and concurrent with the recording of some of the material for Before …And After. So sue us! (Actually I’d rather not think of the potential for “mental duress” damages…) I’m deducing that everything was remixed for this release as some of the mixes differ from their original releases versions. I’ll comment on the previously unreleased material, the noticeably varying mixes, and maybe a few other things that occur to me, but everything but the new material has already been described elsewhere in this archive, so….EC: Strangely enough, although “Night In Tunisia” is mentioned in the notes on Volume 2 and identified as a live performance on KGNU radio (Martha Roskowski, Sleepless Nights) in November 1984, I neglected to include it in the track listing (after “Bugs”). No doubt Walls of Genius was getting way too busy and I was distracted by multiple things, pot-dealing included, but still, this was my mistake.

WoG 0023 Raw Sewage, Volume OneThe Best Of The Early Walls Of Genius C-60 1985

LF: The first three pieces on RS Vol I all come from the mostly acoustic Have Mersey Beats session. Funny how an acoustic session was agreed on as a change of pace when in retrospect it seems so early on in the process. These three pieces work terrifically together and are segued in the same (relative) manner here as in their original incarnation, on the Sunday, Monday or Always! release, but here we hear them start things off, and I think “Making a Deal With the Druids” is a wonderfully ironic yet appropriate start to a WoG release, being so much quieter and less overtly crazed than much of our material, yet still featuring the essential absurdity of what made WoG WoG. And then to jump from that straight into the utter wackiness of "Red Meat/Throbbing Earthworm" and then back again to the lower key relaxed silliness of our quasi and semi-misguided cover of an old time blues song, well, what can I say but, I like this! The new mixes were probably run through the graphic equalizer which may have resulted in more mid rangey mixes, which I believe is evident in "Red Meat/Throbbing Earthworm"…. “Long Tall Woman” is also more mid rangey and seems noticeably a little cleaner…. "Foxy Lady" is also probably a little cleaner in her brand new clothes!

One difference is that “Streets of Laredo” is faded out instead of included in its entirety after Marsha Wooley suggests going there at the end of “Red River Valley”. They do a fine rendition of “Streets” but maybe not a fall down dead remarkable version, so maybe it’s just as well that we only hear that they’re starting it and just imagine the rest. I think the inclusion of “Shiva Reality Lesson” was at least in part a result of comments I made on the reel box when reviewing the contents of this session that I had missed for some reason (“for some reason” may be applied to both my missing the session and my reviewing it!). Ironically, I seem to have been most impressed with “Doom in Kansas” out of the as of then unreleased tracks, which only made it onto the Embarassing Moments release and probably for good reason as it has some very good moments but isn’t very consistent and the Doom becomes a bit of a parody of itself eventually. This one’s not perfect all the way through either (it’s WoG and was all spur of the moment, after all!), but it has some tasty guitar from Ed and some nice vocals from Marsha while Evan holds it all down while adding some nice bits with the bass. Did Marsha get these lyrics from some Hindu text or was it extemporaneous? I don’t know myself, though certainly the “Reagan won” part was original!EC: “Shiva Reality Lesson”: (5-12-1983, originally credited to Major Faultline, with Marsha Wooley, Ed Fowler and Evan Cantor). This was an out-take from the session that produced several tracks of cowboy duets with Marsha Wooley and Evan Cantor singing (“Red River Valley”, “Rock Island Line”, “Doom In Kansas” etc). I notice that on the reel box, David has added his opinion to the track by writing the word “NICE!” beside “Shiva Reality Lesson”. I don’t know why it was not included in a previous release, but it may have been that I felt there were too many tracks with Ed playing “Hendrixian” motifs. This one starts with Marsha’s moaning and then Ed launches into a very Hendrixian fuzz guitar riff. I answer with a percussive bass line and Marsha extemporizes lyrics about Shiva and enlightenment. After Marsha finishes her rap, Ed takes a remarkable solo as I hold down the rhythm for him on the bass. Music-wise, it’s just me and Ed, electric guitar and bass. Without drums or any other additions, we’re laying down a credible heavy-metal line. Marsha returns to the lyrical theme after Ed returns to the introductory riff. It’s a strong piece, both lyrically and musically and I’m glad it found its way onto this in-house compilation.LF: Without going back to listen to the original, I think this mix of “Guitar and Dog Solo” includes some live in the moment introductory explanation (to the participants present) at the start that may not have been included on the Sunday, Monday or Always mix. There’s definitely more backwards stuff at the end, leftover from prior uses of the used reel tape we used. This mix is also named differently, as the original was called “Guitar and Dog Duet”!

LF: Having come up with zillions of setlists for live shows over the years, I’ve noticed the phenomenon that sometimes the same songs work especially well as both closers or openers, and evidently “Abandon Ship” was one to fit that bill as it closes The Many Faces of Mr. Morocco yet was chosen to open Raw Sewage Volume 2! I mostly lambasted and bellyached over my bongo playing in my original notes to “Theme for a Science Fiction Movie,” so I would like to report that as Babushka just passed by while hearing this and not having any idea what it was, she proclaimed “that low thumping” to be the most interesting part of it! Well, that’s my Babushka for ya…. And hey, what’d I tell you, innovation through incompetence! (“I like things that aren’t right,” she later said….) This mix of “Forced Child Labor” doesn’t fade out as the original on Mr. Morocco does but rather is allowed to play on till the Casio gets shut off, allowing the inclusion of more of Andrea DiNapoli’s flute playing, more of Ed’s Echoplex feedback and a smattering of Natasha’s dogs barking! The dogs had become a bit of an old joke by Morocco due to oodles of their presence on the previous two WoG releases, but this may be their only appearance on the Raw Sewage tapes (thanks to the “Guitar and Dog Solo/Duet” not working!), and a subtle one at that….EC: “Jimi’s Strange Dream”: (6/18/83, originally credited to K-9, with Andrea DiNapoli, Evan Cantor, Ed Fowler and David Lichtenberg). This was an out-take from the session that produced a number of tracks on The Many Faces of Mr. Morocco. On the original reel, it is listed as “Jimi’s Horror Wits or Jimmy’s Jam”. Once again, Ed is playing a Hendrixian motif, or perhaps even the chord progression from an actual Hendrix song, this time a very dreamy one. Again, we likely did not use it in a previous title because of the very obvious Hendrix motif. It also may have been considered a throwaway because only Andrea is playing her violin along with Ed on this one. It may be the only Walls of Genius track (ever) to not have either Evan Cantor or David Lichtenberg playing on it. It’s a nice piece, though, and I can see why we decided to treat our listeners with it. Ed creates some very interesting percussive effects with his electric guitar manipulation and Andrea plucks the strings of her violin. I gave it the title “Jimi’s Strange Dream” because of the dreamy Hendrixian guitar part.LF: Seems I used to remember more about “Jimi’s Strange Dream,” now I remember it as if it’s a dream, very vaguely. I think that’s Ed (fan of Jimi!) on Echoplexed guitar and either Evan or Andrea playing Andrea’s violin. Probably Evan. Hey wait, I just found out that “Jimi’s Strange Dream” actually did receive release, on The WoG Sampler!, which was also somewhat of a revisitation tape too, though it only released material that was previously unreleased from sessions that were already represented. I guess Evan was only looking at the original two tapes that featured K-9 material (Morocco and Almost Groovy!) when he wrote on the liner notes that this had been previously unreleased….

LF: The 11/84 dating of the KGNU live performance from which the live “Night In Tunisia” was taken is fascinating to me both because of the ostensible “cheat” as described above but also because it deprives me from guessing that this may have been the same performance from which a few of the tracks on Crazed to the Core were taken, leaving the date of those performances in mystery. Unlike the original WoG quasi cover of this song, during the Tons of Fun session at Ed’s house, we probably had some idea that Evan was playing the chords to this song, though it still didn’t matter that much as none of the rest of us knew how to play it anyway, or at least didn’t try. We may have been a little more accustomed to his slow then frenzied pattern by this time at least. Brad Carton was present for this, playing drums and a drum synthesizer. One funny moment for me is when his drum synthesizer creates some kind of high, descending tone just as I was coincidentally doing the same thing on my slide whistle, causing me to start to crack up but which I mostly stifle. Not sure if anyone else can hear it, but I can! I also play my Pro-One synthesizer on this while Ed plays lead guitar. I’m guessing that’s also him banging his gong at one point, though most of the other non-drum percussion was probably me. We hear Evan mix things up a bit, just barely quoting his chords from the WoG piece “Kristin Called” and then playing a more pronounced chunk of his “Druid” scales before returning to “Night In Tunisia”. (I wonder if it was really 11/83? Then it could and probably would have been the same show as the one the Crazed tracks came from!)EC: “Night In Tunisia”: (Walls of Genius, November 1984, live on KGNU radio). Since we thanked Martha Roskowski, I’m rather positive that she was the KGNU dee-jay who invited us (or ‘let’ us) play live at the radio station. We probably recorded it on a cassette player hooked up to the radio, or on a cassette right there at the radio station. I have no record of it. This was a jazz tune by Dizzy Gillespie that I knew from playing rhythm guitar in a jazz duo, the Mystic Knights Of The Sea. That band was named by Kevin Landes after some club on the Amos and Andy radio show. The duo consisted of myself and saxophonist Kevin Landes, of Washington D.C.s Young Turds [1979] and The French Are From Hell [thru the 80s]) in 1980. The track opens with me playing the straight chord progression and a synth (David) comes up behind. Then I start breaking up the chords, scrubbing chords until I settle into a one-chord drone, while the synth squeaks away in the lead. There are sounds like children’s percussion devices in the background, likely Scott Childress hanging-out and sitting-in with us. I return to the scrubbed chords, then break up the progression in bits and pieces, going from boogie rhythm to stark staccato blasts. Then I morph into a one-chord freak out while the maraca shakes listlessly. This listless approach to the maraca is more like Scott’s approach than Fyodor’s manic percussive attack, which is why I suspect it is, indeed, Scott shaking the maraca. Finally I move back into the song’s chord progression, the guitar subsides and the synth comes to the fore, taking a solo, sort of. A second guitar (Ed Fowler) comes in at this point. He’s finally figured out something to do with all the jazz chords I’m laying down. The maraca continues to shake, on and off, here and there. My rhythm guitar builds up a one-chord drone as Ed plays a mellow lead line and then I return again to the chord progression. I play the “head” and then start in with “Making A Deal With The Druids”. I play the ‘druidisations’ and the chorus once, punctuated by a gong and percussion, and then return to the main Gillespie theme before finishing. It’s a strong version. I have no idea why it never made it on to any other WoG title, but it’s possible that since we already had a version of “Night In Tunisia” on one of our titles, we thought it would be redundant. LF: Once again, just as “Grounded for a Week” commenced our first ever live performance, it gets to close out this tape.